nothing's ever made sense (unless you were next to me)
by Donna Rose
Summary: Jemma never asked for Leopold Fitz to love her. (but she couldn't live if he didn't.)


She makes two cups of tea.

It's kind of a running joke, between her and Fitz. She'll make tea for him and he'll drink it and frown and he'll make coffee for her and she'll drink it and frown. She drinks her tea straight and he takes his with two sugars and milk, but he'll accept it and thank her anyway, even if it's "only leaf water", and "_English_", like the latter was the worst part of it all.

She supposes that's because he _is_ Scottish, after all.

So she always makes two cups of tea when she makes it, because there was always someone there to drink the other.

Except when there's not, and the other cuppa is more accusing than a mug filled with sweet, milky leaf water _should_ be. Except when she was living alone in a motel hundreds of miles away from the person who would drink that tea for her, and she spends most of her days living off the credit card that May and Coulson gave her and sitting in pjs and watching the few channels the motel actually has.

She doesn't pretend it doesn't hurt.

It would be pointless not to let herself choke a bit when she realizes that she left him. It would be more difficult to block out and ignore the memories of him risking his life for her, time and time again, of being _more than that,_ and connected to him in such a way that they were a single unit, a package deal, never one without the other until _she left him_.

_He relies on you too much_, May says, after she finishes sentence after sentence for him. But it's what they've _always_ done, she would have finished those thoughts if he could remember them or not.

_You dote on him too much, like he's not his own person_, and it's so hard to explain how he is, _she_ is, they are both individual people with seperate lives that did not coincide until a particularly terrible class at the academy, with a particularly terrible teacher, but then continued on as one.

But she is not the Patron Saint of Leopold Fitz, she is not sinless.

There are other reasons she left, why he would be better if she wasn't there.

She wants him to get better too much, pushes too hard.

(One instance sticks out in particular, when she tests out the theory that, maybe all those words _are_ still there, and lets him try to puzzle it out on his own until he throws something and gets so _mad_ at himself, and not at Jemma, and he doesn't let himself speak another word until he remembers it.)

She feels guilty.

She hates that he only just told her now, when they were _about to die,_ that he would be so fantastically selfish to hand off the pain of being the last one standing. That even he know they could not live seperatly, and instead of being brave, he made Jemma be braver.

It feels like he'd give up absolutely everything for her and she sometimes doubts if she would do the same.

Perhaps it's because she leaps before she calculates, sometimes, and he calculates once twice and back again before he does anything. Hell, she's the reason they were there in the _first_ place, she leap wildly and freely into an adventure, and Fitz had given his comfort up just to be with her.

She wants to talk it out to him but he's still having trouble expressing things he's learned over years at the academy, studied in book after book and aced in so many tests. He can't remember the word for "coffee pot", or "thermodynamics", or Jemma's middle name, but she wants to_ talk_ to him, wants _him_ to express how _she's _feeling.

She wants him to comfort her and it's entirely selfish and completely horrible of her, _he's_ the one with the bloody _brain damage,_ and she came out of the ordeal without even a scratch. He'd _started_ it with a broken arm.

She'd first left, intent on finding a cure, like he helped her to do.

But then within weeks, she's beginning to doubt it's possible, professors and doctors look at her with pity on their faces and sympathy in their hearts and tell her, damage is _damage_, the best you can do is help him heal on his own, and if he never quite catches up with how he used to be, then embrace that. See doctors, therapists. Watch for _warning signs._

Warning signs for anxiety. For depression.

She feels sick as she walks away and doesn't tell them she can't watch for any of that, because Coulson doesn't have a cell phone, and she left Fitz, and the second cup of tea is growing cold on the counter.

Eventually, someone from the team makes their way back to her motel room, like she was always half dreading and half hoping someone would do.

And Jemma know's it's going to be bad when Skye looks so mad, she could have sworn Ward was standing behind her, or Garret. Her face falls, a little, and part of her worried that Fitz is angry at her, too.

Skye doesn't say hello, she doesn't scream. She sets her jaw and crosses her arms and glares.

"Skye—"

Jemma thinks maybe she went about the whole thing wrong, not telling Fitz, leaving in the night when he was sleeping and not saying goodbye to anyone but May and Coulson. It'd just seemed—easier. Like if she'd done it any other way, she couldn't have left.

"You need to come back." s

Jemma sighs, drawing her eyebrows together.

"May said—"

"I don't care what May said," says Skye. She taps her foot in something of a childish stomp, and swallows. "And I don't care what Coulson said, either, or what you think—"

"I _know_—"

"What you _know_, then. I don't care."

"Skye—" says Jemma. She wants to say Skye, it's not that _easy_, it's _brain damage,_ there's things that can't be fixed just with me being there. "It's not that _simple_—"

"He's _hallucinating_."

Jemma feels like the breath has been knocked completely out of her, which is a _laugh_ because that's what caused this all in the first place.

Oh, _Fitz_.

He always just slightly more dependant, slightly lonelier. She supposes that's what happens when your genius father dies when you're 10, and no one is at the same level or grade that your mind insists on running on, not even your mum.

Jemma, on the other hand, had two parents and strings of friends that kept her enough company during school days. Of course she felt that sometimes no one clicked, no one understood.

She felt lonely, as everyone does, but she was never _alone,_ and Fitz was always both.

But maybe that's just normal, after a brain injury, maybe that's a part of healing, something he needs to get better. She says so, and that's when Skye drops the bomb, the absolute kicker to this whole thing.

"Jemma, he's hallucinating _you_."

It really is as if she's dropped some sort of bomb, shattered Jemma's heart and left dust in its place. Jemma takes a deep breath that feels a bit like laughing, because she's always laughed when she was nervous, and she's sure as hell nervous now.

Maybe it's normal, she thinks, maybe eventually he'll—

But it's false comfort, fading, untrue words, even as they exist only to her.

"How long?" she asks. She swallows. "Does he know—"

"That you left him?"

It's bitter and it's mean, and it's exactly the opposite of what Jemma wanted to hear. It's bitter and it's mean and it's _true,_ and terrible, but she also feels like she's entitled to try and rationalize what she did, defend herself a little.

"May told me he was too dependant—"

Does this prove her right or wrong?

"Skye—_does he know?_"

Sky swallows, and she looks as if maybe a little bit of her anger has depleted. She sits on the single dusty bed, collapsing a little on to it.

"I think so," says Skye. "I think he knows—that you're not real. But he doesn't seem to want to face it. Honestly, I think that he's afraid you left him _because_ he's sick."

Part of her wants to explain to Skye that she's learned he's not _sick._ He's damaged. There's a part of his brain that has withered and short circuited, and it's not something that's going to be fought off by his immune system, but only worked _around_.

"Oh, God," says Jemma. It strikes her with some bitterness, some terrible hate in her heart, that she never _wanted_ to be his rock. She never asked to be his anchor, or to take care of him, never asked for that final breath of oxygen that saved them both from death—two people, two bodies, but one breath.

(She never asked for him to love her, but she couldn't live if he didn't.)

Jemma covers her mouth with her hand and then brings it up to rub at her eyes.

She doesn't think she deserves to cry anymore.

Skye softens.

"For what it's worth," she says, "Apparently hallucination you is a great comfort—"

It's not at all a comfort. It makes Jemma choke, a little.

She remember Fitz used to reminisce about imaginary friends growing up. It was pretty obvious, the subtle background, that they were the only friends he had.

"I'm...sorry."

"It's not your fault," says Jemma. She wipes at her eyes and tries to paint a sort of smile on her face. "I shouldn't have left—"

"You were just doing what you thought—"

"I thought wrong, didn't I?" says Jemma. Damn it all for over two PHDs, graduating High School at fourteen. None of it exactly matters if you don't know shite about the people you love. "If he's so much—_worse_ without me...I knew I shouldn't have believed May. I was being so—bloody—I."

"Hey, you weren't being..." at some point Skye has switched from being angry to trying to be comforting, trying to help. "Like, selfish is if you'd left because you didn't want to see him like that, or something. Trust me, I know when people leave because they're being selfish, and you didn't."

Jemma wonders which version of people that left Skye she's thinking about. Whether it's Ward or her parents or the adoptive ones that never wanted her to stay. They're all selfish bastards to Jemma, and she wonders how on earth she let herself be no better.

But it doesn't matter, because it's not true, and she shakes her head.

"I did," says Jemma. "I left because—because he risked his life for me and I was angry that he did—because I didn't want to live with that guilt...I _left_ because I didn't want to see him broken, face the consequences, I'm not—"

Innocent, or a victim. Not worth his endless devotion and _trust_.

Skye presses her lips together, shakes her head.

"I don't believe that."

"It's bloody well true!" shouts Jemma.

Truer than she let herself believe before, but true enough all the same. If she left just because she thought that it would make Fitz better, she wouldn't feel so goddamn _guilty_ about it, would she? Her mum always used to say that guilt was your conscious trying to get you to do better, so clearly she'd done something _wrong._

Jemma presses the heels of her palms in her eyes and runs them down her face.

"I left him," she says, "And he got _worse_, because I was_ selfish._"

"Fitz wouldn't believe that—"

"Fitz doesn't believe _anyone_ he loves is capable of evil, let alone me."

Fitz, somehow, has this intrinsic faith and hope in everyone he meets. A trust. And it's a dangerous thing to have now, and Jemma's so scared that she'll aide him in losing it, because it's dangerous and it's not wise but it's _comforting,_ it's exactly the reason that there are some people in this terrible, war-filled earth, that are _worth saving._

"See? Fitz loves you—"

"Fitz doesn't_ know_ any better."

Skye sighs.

"Look, that's not true, like, at _all,_ but if you're just going to argue—"

Jemma is so close to losing her temper at Skye. No one ever said she had the patience of a saint, and she never will, and there's only so many times Skye gets to—act like _Skye_, before she completely loses her cool.

She almost says so, before Skye then uses her arms to jump off the bed, walking towards the door.

"Then I'm going to head back to the playground without you."

There's a moment of shock where it doesn't even register to Jemma to follow.

"Skye—wait _up_," says Jemma. She grabs her bag even though there's absolutely no way she can leave, she still has to check out of the motel, she's not ready to go back, there must be some sort of protocol to follow and oh-God-what-if-Fitz-doesn't-want-to-see-me, what-if-he'll-hate-me?

What if he's so much worse than I think?

"For God's _sake,_ _Skye_, I can't just leave—"

"You can't stay, either," says Skye. She shrugs. "Checked you out on the way in."

Jemma lets out a disgruntled sound, walking faster to catch up.

"You can't just _do that!_ How did you even find me?"

Skye snorts.

"Don't flatter yourself you're _that_ hard to find."

"I didn't use my legal name!"

"No," Skye agrees. "You didn't. You just put Fitz as your surname."


End file.
